I recently saw an interview with English actor, Jude Law. During the interview, Law spoke about his very first acting job in the US, a stage play on Broadway. The character he was playing began the first act naked in a bathtub, after which he had to get out of the tub and towel down. I couldn’t help but think how liberating an experience that would be. After standing naked in front of hundreds of people night after night, what would there be to be afraid of? Not much!

Earlier that same day, I walked up to the labyrinth with a very important question on my mind: what is the single most important thing I need to do right now in order to return my body to homeostasis? The insight I received was, let go of victimhood and the belief [fear] that I’m helpless! This is the same insight I received at the ashram in Estonia. Rats! I thought I had dealt with this!

Later that day, I watched a Teal Swan video on youtube where she spoke about overcoming your fears and negative emotions by stepping right into those fears and emotions, rather than running away from them.

What Ms. Swan was asking us to do, is akin to walking up to the bully who has been tormenting you for the last three months and saying to the him or her, “Here I am, go ahead and bully me all you want.” What better way to disempower the bully and empower yourself!

The synchronicity of these three occurrences was not lost on me! I realized that my primary motivation for recovering my health is the fear of what will happen if I don’t. Ironically enough, what will happen, is I will potentially become completely immobile. In other words, totally helpless!

Then this morning I woke up with another insight swirling in my thoughts … what I really fear most, is feeling. Period! I fear feeling!

And this is true! I have a complete aversion to feeling emotional, to feeling upset and to feeling bad. I loathe feeling anxious, feeling tired, feeling grief, feeling embarrassed, feeling weak, feeling uncertain, feeling vulnerable, feeling frustrated, feeling angry, feeling helpless and especially, feeling afraid. So I’ve made a habit of avoiding situations that might cause me to feel these feelings and immediately denying and suppressing them when I do. But this has made me a slave to avoiding emotional pain, which might just have something to do with why I feel like a helpless victim. A self created helpless victim it would seem!

But here’s the thing, feeling is an integral part of the human experience. It is just as essential as thinking. Perhaps even more so! What is more, it is difficult [if not impossible] to fully experience positive feelings, like happiness, when you are unwilling to experience negative feelings, like fear! You can’t have one without the other. It doesn’t work that way.

I have believed very strongly for some time now that fear is at the root of the chronic stress that is at the root of the neurotransmitter imbalance [parkinson’s] I am experiencing. and that in order to recover my health, I need to dissolve this fear. In fact, I’ve been feeling fear almost nonstop, day after day, since the summer, like a relentless pineapple express. I can actually feel it. It literally feels like a noose around my neck. It is a bizarre feeling!

The thing is, when you suppress a feeling, you hold onto it, indefinitely. You create a neural pathway in your brain for the thought that created the feeling, and this neural pathway stays intact, whereas, when you allow yourself to feel the feeling, it eventually passes and you let it go!

In order to let it go, I must have the courage to step into this fear [of feeling] and admit to myself that I’m uncomfortable with it and afraid of it, and even more so, feel it. I need to step into the feeling, whatever that feeling may be, without judging it [declaring it right or wrong] or personalizing it [I’m a weakling for feeling this way].

And I realized, that I’m already stepping into it in a way. By choosing not to take medication, or anything else that might minimize the symptoms I experience, I’m experiencing them full on, every day! I am choosing not to believe it is incurable. I am choosing to learn about it in order to overcome it. Now I need to add the feeling part!

It is also important to remember that any feeling, positive or negative, is just an energy. It is completely natural.

So it seems that what the universe [God] wants me to do is step totally into everything I fear [including feeling], and what better way to do that than make me the [ehem!] victim of a progressive, degenerative, supposedly incurable, neurological condition that that messes with your emotions. This I believe is the ultimate purpose of why I am here.

To live in victimhood and fear is to live in a constant state of struggle, which in turn means to live stressed. This impedes healing.

The good news is, knowing that I created what I don’t want, empowers me with the belief that I can also create what I do want. All it takes is the courage to take the first step!

I used to fear being alone at night. I would lie awake for hours, absolutely unable to move, paralysed with fear of somebody breaking in to my house and violating my privacy. I had many sleepless nights as you can imagine.

When I had a sudden and dangerous health crisis which was labelled as “so young for such an event” I stopped fearing the dark but instead started to fear dying in my sleep…so again I had that fear of the night’s darkness.

It was difficult to overcome but eventually I came to accept that it would indeed be a blessing to pass away in the night, however statistically that is so rare.

I also have three rather large and protective dogs now. I go to bed and fall into a wonderful blissful night’s sleep, knowing that my dogs won’t let any physical harm come to me.

Eventually I started to embrace the night sky, the air, the calm, quiet, serenity that night brings. It is a time for healing, refreshing and re-energizing. I no longer fear being alone or the dark.

That is an awesome spin to put on night time in order for you to feel more comfortable with it, Anita! Just remember, it is always our thoughts that create fear, quite often based on previous experience. Hopefully, someday you will be able to sleep peacefully without the dogs.

The Exorcist! The night I watched it, I slept in a basement apartment by myself! I think it was the most terrifying night of my life! I remember laying there waiting for the bed to start shaking! It is amazing what the mind can do to you!